What kind of information should I collect and share using Reveal Stories?

Reveal Stories is an easy and accessible way to collect many types of information. Using the free form notes or the microphone on your phone, you can collect and share:

Daily communication notes

Changes in routine, diet, sleep

Notes on social interaction, emotional regulation, and communication

Detailed descriptions of behaviours

Antecedent – Behaviour – Consequence data

Notable event / setting event descriptions

… and more!

To help guide your information collection and sharing, meet with your support team and decide on short and long term goals that you want to work towards. The information you collect and share using Reveal Stories will help you and your support team achieve these goals.

If you already have an Individualized Education Plan, an Individualized Support Plan, an Enhanced Support Strategy, or any other personalized care plan you can use Reveal Stories to collect information required by this plan.

What are some tips for collecting information on Reveal Stories?

When collecting information, remember these following points:

Be descriptive – provide as much detail as possible so your support team has a complete picture of the situation

Be objective – if, for example, you want to describe a behaviour make sure that you are using clear descriptions. Instead of saying “they were upset”, say “they screamed loudly for 10 seconds”

Be “real-time” – Reveal Stories allows you to record information anytime, anywhere. Record notes on events as they happen so that the details are fresh in your mind!

Be frequent – Share notes often. The more information you have, the easier it will be to measure important trends and patterns. You can always go back in your notes to review and edit what you recorded.

Be clear – Keep your sentences short. Use punctuation in your notes. And don’t be afraid to ask questions if something is not clear

It is also important that you add tags to each note. This will help you organize your notes more easily, and keep track of things that are important to you and your support team.

What is a support team?

A support team is a group of people who work together to support someone with complex needs. This includes the person being supported, their parents and other family members, therapists, teachers, at-home caregivers, and more.

To be part of a support team means that each member is committed to their role in supporting a person in partnership with that person. This means that the goals, interests, and the voice of that person being supported are respected and valued. Each member is commits to being involved and engaged in the care process including:

Setting development goals in collaboration with the person being supported

Providing appropriate support at home, at school, or in the community

Helping individuals and families navigate the healthcare and/or education system

In addition, members of a support team collaborate with each other, ask questions and advice, learn from each other’s expertise and support one another

What are some tips on setting goals?

Goals are centered on how to develop the skills of the person being supported. When setting goals, it is important to involve the person being supported and to take into account their interests, their favorite activities and who is involved in their support.

The first step is to assemble your support team – together with the person you support – to talk about what is most important to this person. You can use the following questions to guide you:

What does the person you support love to do?

What engages them the most?

What part of your day together do you look forward to?

Use these questions to shape broader goals that reflect the person being supported and their strengths, interests, challenges, and skills.

Once these broader goals are defined, the next step is to work with educators and therapists to come up with a step-by-step approach to reaching these goals. Make sure that each of these steps can be measured, and that they have a timeline associated with them.

At this stage, intervention strategies are discussed and more short-term and direct objectives are defined. When discussing and creating intervention strategies, there is a bigger focus on addressing the needs of the person being supported and overcoming specific challenges that impact their ability to engage, learn, and participate.

As part of your strategy, define the kind of information you need to collect and share with your support team so that you can all keep track of progress made towards your goals and measure the success of your interventions. It is also important to decide what kind of resources you will require, and what each member’s roles and responsibilities are.

Use Reveal Stories to keep track of this information and share it with your support team so that everyone is on the same page.

What is an example of a goal?

Goal:

“Before the end of this month, I will have participated in three different classroom activities together with my friends.”

Strategy:

Teacher and education assistant will congratulate the student by offering verbal praise when they observe a positive interaction with peers in the classroom.

Teacher and EA will record details of the positive interactions on Reveal Stories, including what prompted the interaction and how the students responded to the verbal praise

Occupational therapist will teach the student appropriate exercises that will help the student self-regulate. When the student successfully completes the exercises with prompt, the student will receive verbal praise. When the student successfully completes the exercises without prompt, the student will receive verbal praise and the choice between two preferred activities

Using Reveal Stories, the OT, teacher and EA will record when the student engages in self-regulation exercises at school. They will include whether the student was prompted, and how the student responded to praise

Parents will use Reveal Stories to see how their child is progressing at school. They will congratulate their child with verbal praise when they observe a positive interaction with their siblings at home. Parents will also congratulate their child with verbal praise and a hug when their child successfully completes a self-regulation exercise taught by the OT. They will use Reveal Stories to record the details of sibling interaction and self-regulation.

How do I know I am collecting the right information?

Think back to the goal that you set together with your support team, and the information that you all agreed was important to collect.

As people learn and grow, their needs will change and their goals will evolve. As a result, the information you collect and share using Reveal Stories will certainly change over time.

The more you use Reveal Stories, the more you learn about what kind of information best helps you, the person you support, and your support team reach your goals.

Can I keep track of stress and anxiety using Reveal Stories?

Yes! You can choose to record information that relates to stress and anxiety for the person you support.

Create a note to describe how you notice when stress levels are rising. Describe the strategies and interventions that help you address moments of high anxiety. Our long term goal is to provide a personalized profile of anxiety for each person being supported, and an in-depth understanding of precursors in order to allow people being supported to address anxiety before it escalates. This will be based on behavioural descriptions of anxiety, detailed accounts of antecedents and responses, and other contextual information.

When the Reveal band becomes available, we will already have made a lot of progress towards defining a personalized profile of anxiety for each person using Reveal.

How does Awake Labs keep my information safe?

We are committed to protecting your privacy and security. We keep all information recorded on Reveal Stories with us secure and confidential. Your account information is password-protected for your privacy and security. We implement safeguards to protect the security of the data you send us. We do not share information recorded on Reveal Stories with anyone outside of Awake Labs without your permission.

No data transmission over the Internet or through mobile devices can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. While we strive to protect your personal information and to continuously improve our safeguards, we cannot guarantee the security of the information you transmit to us. We urge you to take every precaution to protect your personal data. There is no guarantee that information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards. It is your responsibility to protect the security of your login information.